I discovered these challenges in early 2011 and have played most of them since that time (although a few times I've forgotten to post my score). I've learned so much from them and have really had a lot of fun playing them. It's exciting to actually win one!
My traits and strategy were very much like Metro's. I made Chisel a fairy with Loner, Easily Impressed, Savvy Sculptor, Loves the Outdoors, and Ambitious traits. I went with fairy so he could use the Aura of Creativity to learn sculpting faster, so he could sleep in a fairy house, so he could have fast food with a positive moodlet, and so he could Talk to Plants for social without using a trait slot for Green Thumb.
Like Metro, I went for unique sculptures in the beginning, and then for money at the end. I wanted to get Chiselmeister for faster sculpting as soon as possible, so I planned to sculpt just clay until completing that. At 20 sculptures done, I'd gotten 19 unique clays and 1 unique wood (which I sculpted to grant a wish when I temporarily forgot my strategy to stay with clay
).
I don't know if staying with one medium helped me get that many unique sculptures in a row or if that was just a fluke, but it happened in my test and in my game. So I continued sculpting clay because I was getting a lot of uniques, and because I could fail faster with clay – it didn't take as long to know if I had a duplicate. As soon as enough fell off to see if it was something I already had, I scrapped the dupes with just a “Decorated” moodlet, indicating Normal or Good, and only kept ones with a “Nicely Decorated” moodlet, indicating Brilliant or Masterpiece.
I was up to 33 unique clays (and 1 unique wood
), when a random sim wandered onto the lot and I took the opportunity to sculpt him. By that point, I was scrapping more and more duplicate clays, and after the ice sim, I scrapped 6 or 7 dupes in a row. I was at the middle of the second week and still had metal sculptures and topiaries to do, and I knew I'd get uniques from those, so I switched to metal and got 4 uniques with only two dupes. Then I started, and scrapped, 4 SimBot Scraps in a row and gave up on metal (didn't get Shapely Conundrum). I switched to topiaries, and stayed with them for the rest of the time. That gave me 4 more uniques, and a lot of Simoleons.
I didn't go for the Master Sculptor challenge, even though it would raise the value – since stone takes so much time to complete, and the challenge was so short, I thought I'd get a better return spending that time on clays (looking for uniques) and topiaries (looking for money).
Thanks for a really fun challenge and congrats to everyone who joined in!
